If you have installed 1.2 beta 2, you have likely noticed GRUB is now used as the boot loader rather than the stock FreeBSD boot loader. Though I’ve seen it a number of times now, this still looks odd to me.

This eliminates a number of problems caused by bugs or limitations in FreeBSD’s boot loader that numerous users have run into, primarily with some SATA drives and any device that wants real mode BIOS system functions.

2 Responses to “GRUB now default boot loader”

Yeah, I was amazed as well. I always like the FreeBSD bootloader for it’s simplicity, the fact that it always works (at least for me), and it never breaks. Had I known this before I installed BETA1.2, I’d been more sceptical, but I didn’t get any problems :).

GRUB is a very good boot loader, and has proven to fix all the issues we had with FreeBSD’s loader. (though I don’t think we have it working on the live CD yet so USB CD-ROM’s still won’t work because FreeBSD’s boot loader is still used)